Murdofleur

MacArthur

Robert Gallagher — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 17:18:34 +0000

I’m joined this episode by Marc Halatsis and Tina Parte to discuss Japan, media and fandom, in a chat that ranges from Western Japanophiles’ love for (an often grotesquely lopsided and reductive version of) the country’s pop culture to C19th vogues for accesorising kimono with European batwing umbrellas to Japanese girls’ love for the ephebic fantasy boys of bishōnen or ’beautiful boy love’ manga.

We audibly eat chestnuts, talk about how nebulous ‘Japaneseness’ as a concept is and trace some of the fascinating loops and involutions chains of East/West cultural exchange are subject to. We also play some music – expect Pan-Pacific improv, Japanese reworkings of the Stones and Street Fighter II-sampling ‘ardcore homages. There’s more East/West musical love-ins on the playlist, too: post-dubstep bass musics <3 Japanese beat ‘em ups, hip hop <3 taiko percussion and Bjork <3 her vaseline-happy artist hubby Matthew Barney – it’s from her soundtrack to his Drawing Restraint 9 that the first track comes.

Incidentally the entire movie - wherein Barney metaphorises postwar US/Japanese relations by having he and Ms. Guðmundsdóttir conduct an arcane nuptial ceremony then hack each other’s limbs off and turn cetaceous – is on the other end of the hyperlink, which’ll be handy for anyone with a thing for Japanese kids vomiting squid…

Oh, and enjoy my new kitchen’s horrible acoustics!

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Spotify Playlist [link to spotify]

Bjork and Bonny Prince Billy – Gratitude
Zeena Parkins and Ikue Mori – Ghostlake
Zomby – You Are My Fantasy (Street Fighter II Theme)
Ricardo Villalobos and Andrew Gillings – Andruic & Japan
Yuzo Koshiro – Shinobi Reverse
Missy Elliott – Get Ur Freak On
Boris – Woman on the Screen

Think of me Kindly

Robert Gallagher — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 20:52:40 +0000

This issue’s podcast is all about memory, media and mourning, with a healthy side order of Twin Peaks and bygone utopian sci-fi. I’m joined by Laurence Horstman, whose expertise in the field of audio recording not only gave us a lot to talk about (inc. the possibility or otherwise of inadvertently minidiscing transmissions from quasars and/or beyond the grave) but means proceedings sound a darn sight clearer than usual too. The discussion is pretty wide ranging; as I said, we talk quite a bit about David Lynch’s mystery-teen-horror-soap Twin Peaks, and especially this scene. We also touch on Michael Robinson’s Victory Over the Sun, and Laurence cites a pretty interesting interview with the boss of Clone records re: genre, musical tech and originality. While we’re doling out hyperlinks, I also said I’d give a shout to DJ Ammo, to whom we’re beholden for the mp3 of that amazing Danny Weed/Whitney Houston mix.

In terms of the playlist, some of the music this issue’s a bit involved and conceptual (albeit really beautiful) but then some of the music’s gimmicky lo-fi mashups. And Virginia Woolf’s in there, talking about writing. Gratifyingly, it turns out you could cut freighters’ hulls on Woolf’s pronunciation of ‘incarnadine,’ even if Youtube and crackle make her sound (as we remark in the podcast) a little bit like Davros.

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Spotify Playlist [link to spotify]

Ensemble Modern – Come Out
Nico – Eulogy to Lenny Bruce
Joy Division – A Means to an End
Jib Kidder – Windowdipper
The Smiths – Rubber Ring
Danny Weed vs. Whitney Houston – It’s Okay to Creep
William Basinski – The Disintegration Loop
Virginia Woolf -Writing Today

Great Power, Great Responsibility, Generous Expenses

Robert Gallagher — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 16:52:27 +0000

Coming to you from the bustling Camden canalside (hence the kinda ghetto sound quality) Murdofleur talks heroism and politics with Ismail Enashe. What with Ismail being fresh from the Labour Party conference we decided to take Gordon Brown as a case study, asking whether he can turn his public perception around and lead Labour to an heroic victory. We also – via a discussion of the Portrait Gallery’s kind of cosy and backslappy ‘Gay Icons’ show – argue rote praise of unanimously respected personages is a cop-out, and that engaging with the legacies of more problematic and contradictory figures and moments might be more good for culture and politics both. Activists, agitators, propagandists and statespersons feature prominently both in our discussion and our playlist, whether it’s via reverential samples of Thomas “TNT” Todd or recitations from the homicidally misandric Valerie Solanas’ S.C.U.M. manifesto.

And if you want more music, the links to the right will yield Tina Weymouth cataloguing the members of her dream band, a Soviet sporting anthem and a Dutch hardcore commingling of Thatcher, Prokofiev and Doctor Who. In other words there should – whatever you personally happen to believe in or hold dear – be something to inspire you to selfless acts of derring-do.

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Spotify Playlist [link to spotify]

The Congos – Congoman
Madvillain feat. Viktor Vaughn – Fancy Clown
Daft Punk – Teachers
Public Enemy – Fight the Power
Matmos – Tract for Valerie Solanas
Ciccone Youth – Addicted to Love
The Kinks – David Watts
The Flaming Lips – Waitin’ for a Superman
Dunaevsky and Churkin – Fitzkulturnaya
Neophyte – I Will Have That Power

Girl, You’ll Emancipate the Pangalactic Serfdom Soon

Robert Gallagher — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 19:24:18 +0000

I’m joined on this episode by Johanna Koljonen, who not only was a girl but has thought, read and written extensively about girlhood, and who’s recently collaborated with artist Nina von Rudiger on the school-set manga Oblivion High. We consider some of the ideas and fantasies girlhood has become a vehicle for, looking at male culturemakers’ Pygmalionesque love affairs with girls they’ve fictionalised, discussing Amy’s comment piece on kids’ sexualities and delving into the weird, weird world of Henry Darger - the likely highly autistic amateur author/artist who spent a good chunk of the last century working on an account of a troupe of Christian girl-warriors ridding the universe of slavery against the backdrop of an intergalactic civil war.

As always we play and discuss some thematically germane music too. Are female vox in UK 2-step in any way functionally equivalent to duck calls? Will La Roux’s Elly Jackson ever forgive us for disregarding the chorus to ‘I’m Not Your Toy’ in order to fawn over and tattle about her? All this and more, in an episode so referentially dense I seriously considered writing a bibliography for it.

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Spotify Playlist [link to spotify]

Blonde Redhead – Misery Is a Butterfly
Richard Hell & the Voidoids – The Plan
Burial – Unite
M83 – Graveyard Girl
La Roux – I’m Not your Toy
Kate Bush – L’Amour Looks Something Like You
Belle & Sebastian – String Bean Jean
The Magnetic Fields – A Pretty Girl Is Like

Hi, Fidelity

Robert Gallagher — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 16:37:50 +0000

I’m joined on this episode by Sophie Frost, who’s lately devoted a lot of her time to writing about faith, philosophy and the arts. We spend quite a while discussing the life, work and coiffure of Diamanda Galas, who Sophie describes as resembling a ‘decaying Winehouse’ and whose take on faith is every bit as idiosyncratic and impassioned as her application of cosmetics. You might wanna google her. We also talk about faith, fear, sexual panic and the Jonas brothers (and if you’ve not seen South Park’s take on the subject you might wanna peep that first too) and ask – in the wake of Megrahi’s release – whether compassion is compatible with law. If that sounds heavy we close things out with a joke about God and a feckless cockney tradesman.

There’s plenty of music too: you can expect Brooklynites speaking in tongues, girlish heartbreak and an excerpt from Boredoms’ monumental ‘Seadrum.’ If you’re feeling equal to the full 23 minute version then that’s linked to on the right, as are a slew of other faith-related tracks, including Skullflower’s feedback-heavy ‘In the Depth of the Stagnant Pond,’ which is meant to induce auditory hallucinations – kind of like Blake’s seeing angels thronging a Peckham tree maybe. For what you’re about to receive may whichsoever deity you prefer (might I suggest Glaucon?) make you truly thankful.

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Spotify Playlist [link to spotify]

Patti Smith Group – Hymn
Diamanda Galas – Ain’t No Grave Can Hold My Body Down
The Shangri-Las – You Cheated, You Lied
Gang Gang Dance – Glory in Itself/Egyptian
Cocteau Twins – Fifty-fifty Clown
Prince – Temptation
Leonard Cohen – Story of Isaac
Skullflower – Black Wind
AGF – If You

Salem – Water

Boredoms – Seadrum

I COULD’VE DONE THAT

Robert Gallagher — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 17:21:16 +0000

On this episode we talk art, difficulty and emperor’s new clothes syndrome. As always, Murdofleur is asking the questions that need asked: do artists really expect us to take what they do seriously? How far’s art comparable to a razorblade down a waterslide? And what can contemporary architecture learn from The Shagg’s bracingly subnormal spin on rock’n'roll?

Along the way there’s plenty of music, from easy listening to transpacific harp improv to a molasses-ized version of Show Me Love which is no less brilliant for having been a piece of piss to make. There’s also a bunch more easy-themed music in the Spotify playlist linked to on the right. Sit back and enjoy (or, in the case of the more ‘difficult’ selections, don’t so much enjoy as, like, submit to the flux and superflux of noise).

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Spotify Playlist [link to spotify]

Wire – The Other Window
Zeena Parkins and Ikue Mori – Transparent Things
Dusty Springfield – I Had a Talk with My Man
The Slits – Heard it Through the Grapevine
AIDS-3D – Showmelove
Memory Cassette – Last One Awake

The Shaggs – Why Do I feel?

ONCE MORE, WITH FEELING

Robert Gallagher — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 19:52:18 +0000

On this episode Jenny Rainsford takes a break from RADA’s rigorous training regime (to which her impeccable elocution is nothing less than a credit and testament) to talk drama, discipline and the compulsion to murder fellow commuters.

As a lot of the content this issue suggests, theatre offers a useful framework for thinking about discipline. Jen’s experience of the thespianisation process brings us around to the (suitably melodramatic) conclusion that discipline’s a kind of haunting or possession, albeit a sometimes beneficial, Freaky Friday-type one.

As always, the discussion’s punctuated and oriented by music. A slew of (more or less tangentially) discipline-related tracks, some of which we discuss, is up on the right. There’s Nike-funded inducements to shape up, Japanese chants, 2-step avowals of addiction and Gothic ballads. Cannibal Corpse’s ‘Discipline of Revenge’ didn’t make the cut though.

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Spotify Playlist [link to spotify]

Black Devil Disco Club-Coach Me
M.J. Cole feat. Digga – Gotta Have It (M.J.’s Funky Dubb)
P.J. Harvey – The Piano
The Siths – Barbarism Begins at Home
Autechre – LCC
Throbbing Gristle – Discipline
LCD Sounsystem – 45:33
OOIOO – UMA
Mercston feat. Plaguelero – Weighty

FUCK EMBODIED SELF-REFLEXIVITY, LET’S DANCE

Robert Gallagher — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 15:52:15 +0000

Boys will be boys may have been last week’s theme, but a lot of this episode nevertheless consists of two guys taking football really seriously. When not trying to get inside of Wayne Rooney’s freckledy head, myself and Jack ask how clichés happen, why we’re so scared of them, and whether there’s a tipping point MDMAwise, whereafter you just end up finding gauche and hackneyed stuff meaningful forever.

Jack mounts a sort of defence of cliché, arguing – via a raft of ‘dance’ music more likely to inspire chin stroking than rug cutting – that clichéphobia begets overcomplication, elitism and self-consciousness. Not for him friday nights spent sulkily skanking to belatedly trendy London bass musics rather than – y’know – having fun. Maybe sport – an arena where self-consciousness can be fatally counterintuitive, where communality is central and where cliché is king – can offer an alternative, teaching us (pace Luomo) to feel our bodies speaking?

Our list of tracks which either embrace cliché or go to great lengths to avoid it is on the right. Sleater Kinney tie themselves in knots arguing their 70s-y rock transcends pastiche, Zomby’s Tears in Rain incorporates every rave trope from air horns to portentous sci-fi samples and Francoise Hardy appeals – in becomingly faltering English – to be taught what clichés really mean.

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Spotify Playlist [link to spotify]

Ivor Cutler – I Love You, Solo on Mbira (Bikembe) in 5:3 Time
Francoise Hardy – Find Me a Boy
Luomo – Body Speaking
Sleater Kinney – Entertain
Girl Talk – Don’t Stop
Squarepusher – Do You Know Squarepusher?
Lil’ Wayne -Kobe Bryant